PEREGRINE CHILD’S LAMB stew was pale and watery, the meat glistening with pearls of fat and gristle. He stirred it around listlessly, before pushing it aside.
‘I’m sorry, love,’ he said for the tenth time.
‘I told you. It’s fine.’
Sophie Hardcastle gave him a tight smile. One of her abundant brown curls had sprung free, and she reached into the top of her stays where she kept her pins, stabbing one into her hair with forceful intent. Child reached out a hand to stroke her cheek, but she pulled away. It was definitely not fine.
He’d planned to take her to a chophouse in Covent Garden which had a new French cook, and then on to the playhouse in Drury Lane. Finn Daley had put paid to that, and so they were sitting in a greasy Holborn watering hole, surrounded by drunk soldiers and penny-fuck whores. Child resisted the urge to put his head in his hands. The watch he’d retrieved from Jenny Wren had been hidden in his shoe, and thus had escaped Daley’s greedy clutches. He’d returned it to his client yesterday, for a commission of two and a half guineas, but that was dwindling fast, and he had no other jobs in the offing. Then there was the problem of Finn Daley’s forty-seven guineas. Two days had already passed. Only five left.
He’d tried manoeuvring his apostles, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, but he had so many creditors no one else would touch him. It was why he’d been forced to turn to Finn Daley in the first place. He’d ask Sophie for a loan, but she’d turned him down in the past. ‘Money is how lovers fall out, Perry. I’ve been there before.’
None of it was his fault; that was the worst part. It had all gone so well when he’d first started out in London. He’d taken on a little debt, just to set himself up on his feet, but it was nothing he wouldn’t have been able to repay in time. His London connections had sent a few clients his way and, slowly, word had got around that Child was the thief-taker to go to when a gentleman was in a fix. Lost some compromising letters? Had a diamond necklace stolen? Want to trace an eloped daughter? Perry Child was your man. Little wonder his competitors had been so upset. Child was an interloper on their turf, and they’d clubbed together to work against him. Spreading rumours about his drunkenness and his murkier activities in Deptford. Soon his clients dwindled to a trickle and his debts had become a problem he could no longer ignore.
Five days. And then Finn Daley would come looking for him again.
He gave Sophie a wan smile. ‘As soon as I’m back in the game, I’ll take you to Drury Lane, I promise.’
‘No, Perry, that’s not going to work.’ Sophie tugged her silk shawl tighter around her ample bosom, and he gazed at her, concerned. It wasn’t like her to hold a grudge.
‘Then tell me what I can do to make it up to you.’
‘It’s not that.’ She sighed. ‘I was going to tell you later, but I didn’t want to spoil our night. I had word of my Sam’s ship yesterday. She’s been sighted off Southampton.’
Sophie’s husband was First Officer of an Indiaman, gone for years at a time. The money was good, but Sophie got lonely. Hence Peregrine Child.
‘How long will he be in London?’
‘Six months, perhaps longer.’ She pressed her knuckles against his arm. ‘Don’t look like that. You knew the way it was.’
He couldn’t deny that. It might even have been part of the attraction. They sat there a while longer, making stilted attempts at conversation, but the heart had gone out of their evening, and eventually Sophie rose, gathering her cloak.
‘I’d better be getting back to the children. You look after yourself, Perry.’ She tied her bonnet under her chin, while he mustered a smile. ‘And ease off on the wine, hey? The way you drink, you’ll be dead before you’re fifty.’
Walk away and do it like you mean it. Child watched her go, and then called the tap-man over. Taking Sophie’s advice to heart, he swapped to gin. As he drank, he thought of his dead wife, Liz, wondering what she’d make of him if she could see him now. Not much, was his best bet, but then at least he wouldn’t be confounding her expectations. Liz had used to tell him to stop drinking too, but it wasn’t like he didn’t know. Why did women have to carp on so much about the bloody obvious?
Much later, he walked home through the streets of Holborn. Drunken soldiers’ songs drifted up to him from the Fetter Lane taverns: Fuck the Americans! Fuck the French! Which was all very well, except everyone knew the war was lost, the colonies gone for good, the British broke and humiliated by their enemies. Child decided he was a fitting metaphor for his once-proud nation.
He lived in a little court off Gray’s Inn Lane, on the first floor of a tall, narrow timber house with covered balconies sitting uneasily upon rusting brackets. A carriage was idling at the entrance to the court, and the coachman gave Child a contemptuous look as he fumbled for his key. His neighbours – legal clerks and other scriveners – kept respectable hours, and the landlord was too parsimonious to light the lamps in the halls after ten. So Child was forced to grope his way up the implausibly steep staircase, drawing to an abrupt halt when he made the turn on the landing and spotted two shadowy figures outside his door.
In his time as magistrate, Child had sent many men to the gallows. He never knew who might step out of his past seeking a reckoning. His hand dropped to the pistol in the pocket of his greatcoat. ‘What do you want?’
‘Mr Child?’ A woman’s voice, one that bespoke breeding and money and everything else Child resented at that moment.
‘I’m Child,’ he said. ‘You have the advantage of me, madam.’
As she came forward, he caught a waft of expensive scent. In the half-light he could see she was very beautiful. She was looking at Child with a faint trace of disappointment. You and all, love, he thought. You and all.
‘My name is Caroline Corsham,’ she said. ‘I believe you know my husband, Captain Henry Corsham. A woman has been murdered, Mr Child, and I need your help.’